Australia - The Movie

I have to write this or I'll just put it in the too hard basket if left too long. Rene, a friend Steven and myself saw this last evening at the new Barracks Palace cinema complex (very nice indeed). We left the theatre 3 hours later not sure whether or not to cry, laugh, look sheepishly embarrassed at each or, or what...

An elderly gentleman being lead out from the previous screening commented on how fast the three hours went, and I'd have to agree. It is at most times a rollicking good yarn, but please suspend reality at the cinema door - it is SO full of factual and incidental faults that it is both jarring and conversation inducing.

No, Nicole Kidman isn't awful, just unsure as to play the part for laughs or for real. Baz Luhrmann (director) went all out in his usual style to parody a romance of the fifties with Hugh Jackman playing the archetypal rough leading man with a heart of gold. His appearance at the ball all shaved and gorgeous in a white dinner jacket is sent up by the casual fall of a lock of hair across his brow. Now that is corny. Mind you Jackman has an outdoor shower scene almost worth the price of admission, but I'm being shallow (and more...).

Did the Japanese land troops on an island just offshore of Darwin? Baz and his poetic licence. Next thing the foreign viewer might think is that the Stolen Generation is just that too, poetic licence, except it isn't. I would also recommend the building materials from the burning church to be used in all Australian timber homes. Long after it has been bombed and burning, it still just gently flames in the background, all sort of neat and controlled, with hardly any of the main structure burned and collapsed. I've seen a timber home go up in flames from the time it was lit by a grass fire until the roof collapsed with radiated heat I've not experienced except in a bush fire. It happens in just minutes, not hours. More poetic licence?

Look, the production values at times are epic, the scenery impressive, the accents grating, the dialogue predictable, but having said all that I'd heartily recommend any Australian to go and see it on the big screen. For overseas viewers, I'd take much of it with a grain of salt. The baddies are SO bad that they do all but wear black.

The scenery is impressive, and the dry country a mob of kangaroos can live on is astounding to watch; not a blade of grass to be seen but all fit, healthy and bounding along beside the truck. Shame it is all total rubbish, but then again many cowboy and Indian films and westerns were similarly so. But you know, I sort of believed Gone With The Wind, but then again I was about 12 when I saw it, and that was around 1962 and it was already over 20 years old then. I somehow don't see this film having a shelf life beyond 2009's DVD release. A shame; still go and see it, it is bold and ambitious, but sadly less than it could have been.